IM Creator is a very easy to use and hosted website builder that allows anyone to create good-looking websites without diving into any HTML-CSS or JavaScript.

There are many creative templates to choose from where all of them are optimized for search engines and looking good on mobile too.

Once the template is picked from a well-categorized list (it is also possible to start with a blank template), the site can be edited live with drag ‘n’ drops.

Inserting new galleries, slideshows, contact forms or menus is just a click away. All of them presented nicely and user-friendly.

One of the most frequent jobs while creating a website, editing images are also handled within IM Creator. There is a built-in image editor for resizing or cropping images.

Also, there are lots of widgets to enhance the website like Google Maps, Twitter timeline, SoundVCloud, Vimeo, Facebook and more.

Websites can integrate with any Google Analytics account, come with free e-mail accounts and new templates are introduced regularly.

How to join the giveaway?

3 lifetime subscriptions (valued $95/year) are being given away. In order to join:

• Leave a comment below telling us what your favorite template from IM Creator is (view their collection and please share the link)
• “Like” IM Creator page on facebook.com/imcreator

Winners will be announced a week later (13 May 2013) and announced here. Good luck to all.

The winners

Here they are:

• Ciril Trcek (comment #1264273)
• Firebit (comment #1264343)
• Lukas Janda (comment #1264236)

Congratulations to the winners and thanks to everyone for being a part of this giveaway.

A beautiful font can easily turn a standard text into a good-looking title, logo, etc..

Solomon Font Family is definitely one of the most exciting font packs out there with 6 decorative fonts in 6 different weights (12 fonts total).

It has a well-finished geometric design with optimized kerning and looks elegant without being too much flowery.

The fonts have support for characters of 50+ languages so they can easily be used in multilanguage projects.

They are normally priced $279 but discounted for $9 at MightDeals. You can choose to get the desktop version or the web font version for the price (or get both for $18).

Displaying video on websites is both easy and hard as a good video experience usually requires a custom-styled, cross-browser and fast player.

Flowplayer, the popular HTML5 video player, offers a great experience with a completely customizable feature set.

One of the most important things when playing video is probably the browser support. The player does that perfectly with HTML5 by default and falling back to Flash when needed.

Flowplayer’s interface is completely customizable and it comes with 3 beautiful skins. Also, its layout is fluid and works in any screen size with no extra settings.

There is a web-based designer to create a completely new skin and also see how flexible it is.

It can be controlled very easily (keyboard and touch events support) and offers a (native) fullscreen mode too.

Cuepoints can be defined for any video, sub-titles can be added and the videos can even be displayed in slow-motion.

For a better customization, any HTML can be shown when the videos are preloading and once they are ended (good for presentations and branding).

Flowplayer integrates well with Google Analytics and can track “how long a video is played, how many times it is played and in which format (HTML5 or Flash).

Each video file is embeddable (if enabled) with the help of a share button that auto-generates an embed link.

All the functionality of the player can be controlled with a powerful API and it has callbacks on every level to interact with any event.

The player is open source and free to use under the GPL license. For commercial use, it requires a license.

And, Flowplayer team provides great support (paid support exists) and an active user community that discusses on their product forum.

How to join the giveaway?

Flowplayer is giving away 3 * Commercial licenses ($95 value/each) and in order to join:

• please comment to this post

And, the winners will be selected randomly on 06 May 2013 (1 week later) with the query below:

SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_id=4037 AND comment_approved=1 AND comment_type='' GROUP BY comment_author_email ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 3

Good luck to all.

The winners

Here they are:

• bigcloud (comment #1263775)
• Techspy (comment #1263756)
• Federico Garcia (comment #1263809)

Congratulations.

For any e-commerce website, simple-to-advanced, Magento is probably the most complete, free and open source solution out there.

And, it can be improved further so easily with professional extensions in the market.

Magestore, a popular Magento extensions provider, has a fresh extension for improving the checkout process which is called Magento One Step Checkout.

The extension helps minimizing the abandoned cart rate by enabling customers to view the basket and fill the shipping + payment information in only one step.

This checkout page is smart and auto-updates itself when needed without any refreshes (like the change in address, shipping type, etc.).

It also supports applying coupon codes and gift messages or running simple surveys still on the same page and comes ready with multiple payment options (PayPal, credit cards, SagePay..).

1 Step Checkout works with all 3 checkout modes (register, logged in, guest) and has built-in Geo-IP detection for simplifying the process further by auto-filling address details as much as possible.

There is also a unique feature called “Web-POS for admin checkouts”. Using this feature, it is possible to complete offline sales as an existing user or guest. Again on a single page, the store admins can search for the product, add it to the cart quickly and complete sale.

The extension is a must check for any Magento website and there is a detailed comparison of it with other well-known checkout extensions.

How to join the giveaway?

Magestore is giving away 3 licenses and, in order to join, please follow the steps:

• create a free membership at Magestore
• comment to this post using your Magestore e-mail in the e-mail field

Winners will be selected a week later (02 May 2013) with the query below:

SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_id=4020 AND comment_approved=1 AND comment_type='' GROUP BY comment_author_email ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 3

Good luck to all.

The winners

Here they are:

• sean (comment #1263084)
• Robin L (comment #1263695)
• webworker (comment #1263886)

robin@rwl.se

Companies usually share media related to their brands (logo, guidelines, images or documents) online so that they can be re-used properly by others.

Smartimage, a professional and paid web service, makes managing such media so easy and also provides a great experience for the end users.

It enables the brand admin to upload files (AI, EPS, GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF or PDF are supported) tag and categorize them from a clean admin interface.

Uploading is pretty easy via drag ‘n’ drops and a graphic file manager exists for editing meta data when needed.

After that, end users can browse these items from a user-friendly web page and download them in various sizes including Retina Display (different sized versions are auto-created).

The whole collection or each item can be shared with others with social links, e-mail or embedding.

And, Smartimage keeps track of all these sharing activity besides stats like “the number of downloads”.

Items uploaded can be public or private, the whole layout works in all major devices including mobile and custom domain names can be used for the hosted brand page.

The service is being improved regularly and new features like “multiple admins, customizable collections, video support” are planned to be released.

A demo exists to find out how an image collection can look like and the app can be tried freely for 45 days.

There are self-learners and others that find it easier to learn from another.

Although neither is better and “which one is easier/better for you” is the most important, learning the tricks -at least- from experts make so much sense.

For anyone willing to improve their web/graphic design-related skills, MightyDeals is offering a huge discount (50%) for the “Certified Adobe Training system: Train Simple“.

Train Simple has 3000+ video tutorials on technologies like HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript or WordPress and programs in this field (Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Illustrator..).

The deal includes a year of membership for $47/year (rather than $99) and there are also mobile apps for iOS/Android to watch them on the go.

P.S. Train Simple also provides certification once a specific track is followed through their system and they are trusted by companies like Zappos, Google, Nike and much more.

Maps are used so widely in web design and they are usually expected to be interactive when presenting data.

It can be the branches of an international company, statistics about  countries or just destinations to visualize. Like said, lots of uses.

Simplemaps is a website that provides professional, highly-customizable and interactive maps built with JavaScript and SVG (or Flash).

SVG has a wide browser-support and it works very well on mobile + tablet as well.

There are maps for “world/countries, continents, USA and Canada” and the usage +customization doesn’t require advanced development knowledge. It works by simply editing a text file and a detailed, step-by-step documentation exists.

Also, Simplemaps website has an online customization tool that enables the users to edit the countries, change colors, descriptions, links and more.

Considering that the maps are in vector (SVG), tiny or huge, they work great on all sizes. And, they even come with a zoom-in functionality.

With some JavaScript, it is so easy to add new features to them like tooltips, selectable regions and much more.

To sum up, SVG maps are definitely the way to go for modern web maps and Simplemaps has a wide range of products on the field.

P.S. For Flash fans, the website also offers similar maps in Flash with their source code.

How to join the giveaway?

Simplemaps is giving away 3 licenses (for a map of your selection). Commenting to this post is enough.

Winners will be selected on 22 April 2013 (1 week later) with the query below and announced as an update to this post.:

SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_id=3981 AND comment_approved=1 AND comment_type='' GROUP BY comment_author_email ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 3

Good luck to all.

The winners

Here they are:

• Roshin C (comment #1260748)
• Jed (comment #1260726)
• DR (comment #1260708)

1260708

When it comes to the word “social network”, Facebook and Twitter are probably the first ones that come to the mind. And, creating a new one can sounds like “creating an alternative to them (which is kinda crazy)”.

However, there are lots of niche social networks out there which are used by millions of people. And, creating a new one is not something crazy, actually, something not that hard.

Dolphin, a professional PHP web application, is the most popular self-hosted solution for building such communities.

The application has all the core features (and more) that can be expected from social networks like connecting with friends, status updates, messaging, chats, image/video sharing, groups or events.

Members can discuss on forums, have personal pages or blogs and there are even e-commerce features where the site owner and/or members can create stores and sell stuff.

Visitors can register with their e-mails or sign-up with Facebook Connect to see which other Facebook friends are there (also invite them).

Considering audio/video is shared too much on social networks and handling audio/video streaming +processing can be expensive, Dolphin has a custom media server that takes care of this.
Read the rest of this entry »

Edicy is a hosted and professional CMS platform that enables designers and developers to create new sites and/or integrate any existing sites.

The platform doesn’t require a hosting account, anything to be installed and  it is always up-to-date + secure.

Many templates exist to get started with or new ones can be created with the help of a powerful templating engine.

And, optionally, there is a desktop designer tool which actually launches a small webserver that can render Edicy‘s templates. So that you can keep designing sites in your favorite editor.

There is an easy-to-use content editor to edit sites while browsing, it has a built-in and advanced image editor where you can upload with drag ‘n’ drops and rotate, crop, resize them.

Besides images, videos, tables, maps and other widgets can be inserted within few seconds. Also, a form engine exists to create any type of forms and collect data (they can be exported too).

Websites created don’t need to be all static, it can work with databases or product catalogues, has a blog engine and can be integrated with 3rd party apps.

Another very useful feature is the ability to offer the same website in different languages. Once a new language is added, Edicy simply asks you to insert the translated texts.

The service has many other features from password-protected pages to, statistics or the ability to managing your domains.

To sum up, Edicy is very handy for anyone willing to create their own site or a bunch of sites for their customers (and get support when needed).

It costs almost the price of a quality hosting account (which is included) and 300,000+ sites are already being managed by it.

Today, creating cool videos for any platform (web, TV, etc.) is not that hard with the help of high-quality footage.

VideoBlocks is a professional stock footage website to find 100,000+ stock videos, motion backgrounds, sound effects, production music and more.

Info: VideoBlocks is giving away 3 * 1 month (unlimited downloads) subscriptions ($79 value/each) to WRD readers and details can be found at the end of this post.

The website has a huge library which is well-categorized (slow-motion, nature, people, locations or cartoon, ambiance, horror.. for sounds) which eases browsing and locating the right resources.

In contrary to what you would expect, they are offered for a good price with a single plan of “unlimited downloads”. They can be used in any type of projects and no additional fees for that.

VideoBlocks’ library grows regularly with new resources being added each day and their footage is already being used by media giants ABC, MTV or National Geographic.

How to join the giveaway?

Commenting to this post is enough. Winners will be selected on 27 March 2013 (1 week later) with the query below and announced as an update to this post.:

SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_id=3885 AND comment_approved=1 AND comment_type='' GROUP BY comment_author_email ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 3

Good luck.

The winners:

• dlv (comment #1182947)
• Luca (comment #1182707)
• pablo luis rey (comment #1186747)

Congratulations to the winners and thanks to everyone for joining.